It's Okay to Shoot a Character: Moral Disengagement in Violent Video Games

“Also, according to Mar and Macrae (2006), ‘‘[Humans] routinely view quite abstract nonliving representations as if they were intentional agents’’ (p. 110, see also ‘‘Ethopoeia’’ in Nass & Moon, 2000).”

“…15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 868 Journal of Communication 59 (2009) 865–890 © 2009 International Communication Association T. Hartmann & P. Vorderer Moral Disengagement neglect of a character’s moral status and human essence (Haslam, 2006).”

“Enjoyment was measured with five items taken from Hartmann and Vorderer (2010).”

“When virtual violence was framed as morally justified, participants felt less guilt and experienced fewer negative emotions after playing, suggesting that the availability of cues to morally disengage influences individuals’ affective reactions to violent behavior [52].”

“In-game justification of the digital violence also seems to matter, as participants in the study of Hartmann, Toz, and Brandon (2010) felt guiltier when their violent actions were presented as unjus-tified (see also Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010).”

“Prior research suggests that feelings of guilt reduce media enjoyment (Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010; Lin, 2011).”

“Many digital acts may be viewed as of little or no consequence given that most such acts have no impact on the ‘ real world ’ and thus, might be particularly easy to morally distance one ’ s self from (see Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010), altering appraisal patterns and resulting emotional experiences.”

“And even though game expertise and familiarity has been found to affect enjoyment (e.g., [34]), most studies (n=52) did not take this into account.”

“This study is presented in full detail in Hartmann and Vorderer (2010).”

“Existing research indicates that conceptions of morality may guide game decisions in some contexts,(2) but not others.(3) Perceptions of characters and events within video games appear to be an essential part of whether individual game players consider game decisions to be moral and whether individuals use personal mo…”

“This line of argument found some empirical support as well (Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010; Klimmt, Schmid, Nosper, Hartmann, & Vorderer, 2006).”

“32 Related to this, we might also implicate the role of cognitive dissonance in these observed findings– particularly with the negative association between responsibility and anti-social gaming.”

“Moral disengagement, in turn, may affect other audience responses, such as perceptions of the character and character liking (Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010; Klimmt, Schmid, Nosper, Hartmann, & Vorderer, 2006; Krakowiak & Tsay, 2011; Raney, 2004; Shafer, 2009; Tsay & Krakowiak, 2011).”

“Many studies have examined the impact of violent games on aggression, but to our knowledge none has examined the impact of violent games on lack of self-control or cheating, although some scholars have hypothesized a link (Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010).”

“5,13,14 The present study was designed to close this empirical gap.”

“We moved beyond the scope of previous studies by focusing not only on moral transgressions in the domain of violence (cf. Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010; Young & Whitty, 2011) but also with respect to the broad range of moral foundations proffered by MFT.”

“It may be that individuals morally disengage themselves from their toxic behavior online (Bandura, 1999; Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010).”

“On a broader level, our studies reaffirm empirical findings that interacting with virtual agents can trigger similar moral reactions as interactions with humans do (e.g., Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010; Reeves & Nass, 1997).”

“Thus, these results complement a growing body of results that indicate that video game players act toward game characters in a social way, and therefore, may experience moral conflict during game play (e.g., Farrar et al., 2013; Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010).”

“Furthermore, video games can have moral meaning and significance to players (Hartmann, Toz, & Brandon, 2010; Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010).”

“Filmwriters and video gamedesigners often celebrate retaliation, providing scenarios of prior injustice to help disengage viewers' moral standards and repugnance in the face of violence and mayhem (Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010).”

“The de fi nition and realisation of violence in moving images is itself of course a complex and widely discussed issue (cf. Prince 2003, 2009; Hartmann and Vorderer 2010).”

“The present approach assumed that users that justify physical violence also morally disengage and perceive virtual violence as less morally significant (Funk et al., 2004; Hartmann and Vorderer, 2010; Krakowiak and Tsay, 2011).”

“Some recent works explored the process of moral disengagement within the virtual boarders (e.g., Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010); however, to our knowledge, no research has yet investigated the effects of such media on moral disengagement in the real world.”

“It has been shown that violent video game play can cause guilt (Hartmann et al., 2010; Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010) and RPG play can cause transportation (Brookes et al., 2011), yet these separate elements have yet to be tested simultaneously.”

“Previous video gaming studies have primarily investigated the effects of game violence on players’ feelings, emotions, or arousal (Anderson et al. 2010; Arriaga et al. 2008; Hartmann and Vorderer 2010; Ivory and Kalyanaraman 2007).”

“The academic investigation of digital games as cultural forms has produced results on subjects such as player-game relationships (Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010; Klimmt, Schmid, Nosper, Hartmann, & Vorderer, 2006; Myers, 1984), virtual identification (Klimmt, Hefner, & Vorderer, 2009; Konijn, Bijvank, &…”

“In addition, a predominantly tacit conflict filter enables a moral disengagement in the sense of Hartmann and Vorderer (2010) that”

“These narrative frames enable a form of moral disengagement (Hartmann and Vorderer 2010) that makes the subsequent massive violence executed by players appear legitimate and without an alternative.”

“Some scholars argue that perceiving the experience as a ‘‘game’’ diminishes the participants’ ability to empathize with the people depicted, 25 whereas others claim that taking the perspective of others by means of play should elicit empathy.”

“75 during violent video game play (Hartmann and Vorderer, 2010).”

“Accordingly, this study argues that decoupling processes suppress feelings of guilt and make consumers feel ‘less bad’, which in turn extends to increased purchase intentions (Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010).”

“The second perspective indicates that game realism prevents players from mentally (and often morally) distancing themselves from virtual violence, which lowers the enjoyment of playing violent games (Hartmann, 2017; Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010).”

“…when a player acted as a “good” game character in a violent video game (such as Righteous Army or Counter-Strike), the moral panic and negative emotional experience generated by playing games was less (Hartmann and Vorderer, 2009; Hartmann et al., 2010; Weaver and Lewis, 2012; Shi et al., 2013).”

“Rather, the appreciation of poignant or dramatic movies (Oliver & Bartsch, 2010, 2011; Oliver & Raney, 2011) or the confrontation with moral conflicts in video games (Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010) are important facets of the use of entertaining media.”

“Research on violent video games suggests that audiences with high empathy – a trait variable closely connected to the moral concept of care (Gilligan, 1982) – enjoy unjustified violence in a video game less than others (Hartmann, Toz, and Brandon, 2010; Hartmann and Vorderer, 2010).”

“These accounts include strategies related to moral disengagement (Hartmann and Vorderer, 2010) or self-reported guilt reactions (Grizzard et al.”

“In a large body of video game research, its ethical/moral dimensions and implications are often studied in the context of violent games (e.g., Gollwitzer & Melzer, 2012; Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010; Schulzke, 2010).”

“Studies about the aggressive effects of violent games showed that non-aggressive players could put their personal values and beliefs aside while playing so they could enjoy the game and shoot human game characters (Hartmann and Vorderer 2010).”

“For Hartman and Vorderer (2009), the virtual game world is real enough for players of violent video games to the extent that they have to engage in the process of moral disengagement.”

“The degree to which these forms of aggression elicit PA may depend on these temporary suspensions of everyday conventions, thus reducing any risk of perpetrator remorse or feelings of guilt (for a review specific to media violence, see Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010).”

“There is also preliminary research that suggests player en-joyment can be diminished or increased when interacting with artificial agents based on “moral disengagement” from negative events (e.g., deaths of virtual agents) [9].”

“Experimental findings reported by Hartmann and Vorderer (2010) converge with this argument, as players who were familiar with a violent stimulus game displayed less moral distress and guilt.”

“This is supported by previous research that found that moral disengagement took place in 324 video game to avoid conflicts with enjoyment of the game and with in-game decision making 325 (Hartmann and Vorderer, 2010; Hartmann 2012).”

“To avoid players’ guilt and maintain enjoyment, violent video games often include a specific set of moral disengagement strategies, 29,30 such as providing a good reason to fight (e.g., to save the world), defending against nonanthropomorphic creatures (e.g., aliens).”

“For the case of video games, designing the narrative in certain ways can help or hinder the use of moral disengagement strategies (Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010).”

“The fierce competition environment is likely to induce immoral behaviors by encouraging individuals’ moral disengagement (Corrion et al., 2009; Hartmann and Vorderer, 2010).”

“…applied these moral disengagement mechanisms to explain the appeal of media messages in various contexts, including violent video games (Gabbiadini et al., 2012; Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010; Krcmar et al., 2018; Krcmar & Eden, 2019) and political propaganda (Frazer, 2020; Frissen & d’Haenens, 2017).”

“Previous research has already indicated that enjoyment should suffer if people are forced to act against their moral orientation (Hartmann and Vorderer, 2010).”

“Moral disengagement may also be at play here [43], with participants adopting a mind-set of “this is just a game”, further factoring into the figurative distance from the in-game events and actions.”

“…3, Steam L4D2 Forums) A number of studies have noted that video games, including those played online, are used successfully to reduce the stress of players (Ferguson & Rueda, 2010; Hussain & Griffiths, 2009; Reinecke, 2009) and can result in reduced negative affect (Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010).”

“…storyline and mechanics; players may consequently see violence as reasonable and beneficial, potentially increasing the likelihood of aggressive outcomes (Bandura, 1986; 1994; Carnagey & Anderson, 2005; Hartmann & Vorderer, 2010; Hartmann, Krakowiak, & Tsay‐Vogel, 2014; S. L. Smith et al., 2003).”

“Moreover, harming mindful virtual humans can increase guilt, along with other negative states (Grizzard et al., 2017; Hartmann and Vorderer, 2010).”